3D Printing Magnetophoretic Displays
We present a pipeline for printing interactive and always-on magnetophoretic displays using affordable Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printers.
Using our pipeline, an end-user can convert the surface of a 3D shape into a matrix of voxels. The generated model can be sent to an FDM 3D printer equipped with an additional syringe-based injector. During the printing process, an oil and iron powder-based liquid mixture is injected into each voxel cell, allowing the appearance of the once-printed object to be editable with external magnetic sources.
To achieve this, we made modifications to the 3D printer hardware and the firmware. We also developed a 3D editor to prepare printable models.
We demonstrate our pipeline with a variety of examples, including a printed Stanford bunny with customizable appearances, a small espresso mug that can be used as a post-it note surface, a board game figurine with a computationally updated display, and a collection of flexible wearable accessories with editable visuals.
Created by:
Zeyu Yan, Hsuanling Lee, Liang He, Huaishu Peng
Publications:
ACM UIST 2023 DEMO DOI